Don Imus is a HeroBy: Ehimwenma E. Aimiuwu
May 2007

Growing up in
Nigeria in the 1980s, rap
and hip-hop was the coolest invention of all.When I came to
America in the early 1990s
and saw hip-hop for what it truly became, I had to disown it and separate myself
from it quickly.It did not only degrade women and emphasis
materialism, but it also promoted dysfunctional behaviors.
Hip-hop became everything my parents, pastors, and teachers told me never to
become.

The television images of
hip-hop were grown men (some married) acting like little boys, people roaming
around aimlessly in pursuit of nothing, materialism, glorifying prisons and
jails, naked women all acting like prostitutes, and extremely physical actions
without grace and composure.The hip-hop messages are always
about money, drugs, girls, jails and prisons, marijuana, and partying.As far as I am concerned, hip-hop is greatly responsible for many
negative norms of Black America today.These norms include
fatherless homes, single mother pride, extravagant spending, poverty, little
love for education, high school dropouts, and teenage pregnancies.

Many Black leaders did not do
enough to stop or purify this menace called hip-hop culture or generation.This is partly because the two major source of revenue for many Blacks is
sports and entertainment.By condemning hip-hop, it could
affect the income of the Black community that depends on it.
Hip-hop culture was becoming the new age Black culture, to the extent that if
you did not belong, your Blackness was questioned. So it
became cool to belong and if you belonged, you had to embrace all degradations
properties that came along with it.

However, thank God for Don
Imus, who mistakenly called the Rutgers Women Basketball team "nappy headed
hoes".I do not think he tried to insult them, but rather,
to make fun of the girls in a language that seemed to be culturally acceptable
even by Black American standard. However, one would expect that Imus was above
that and could have been more respectable even if the popular Black hip-hop
culture feels it is okay.What I am grateful to Imus for is
that he said it anyhow, and must accept the punishment for his benevolent
mistake.The good thing Imus did for Black America was to
make them hear the pitiful state of the hip-hop culture from the lips of a White
man and this got them thinking.

Now that the hip-hop nation
has realized that whenever they create negativity in the name of music and
entertainment, they give the world a license to degrade them.Now, they have to face the fact that honor and respect is superior to
money.This will now challenge them to take control of their
music, the content, and the video, instead of allowing the powerful music
companies dictate how they perform their art and define their culture for the
sake of money.Imus has brought some level of responsibility
and maturity to Black America.So for once, we will finally
purify hip-hop or trash it.Soon, I believe we will come
back to producing good quality music for the soul that will help transform Black
image, culture, and expectations from the inside out.